Archive for April 2010

I had the privilege of attending Opening Day at Comerica Park yesterday. It was very cold in the stadium – I heard the wind chill was a balmy 28 degrees.

Anyway, about halfway through the game, the sun peeked out from behind the clouds for the first time, and a loud, sustained cheer went up – one of the louder ones on the day. A few second later, the Tiger batter (who I believe was Carlos Guillen) h

it a ball in the air and many people in the crowd leaped up, thinking it was going to be a home run.

Not even close. It was a lazy fly ball to center and the inning was over. I wondered why people thought that was goin

g to be a home run – just because the sun came out? Hitting a home run is not an easy thing to do and requires a lot more skill and talent than having the sun come out.

Life’s a lot like that. I’m a big believer that you create your own luck. And yes, I admit to playing the “if I can successfully throw this piece of paper in the wastebasket, then something good will happen to me” game, but there’s more to it than that. You have to do at least some work to make good things happen.

But when everything falls into place, it makes success all the more sweeter.

I’m at the gate in New York waiting to fly back to Detroit. I’m working on my laptop and look next to me and there’s a guy that looks a lot like Yzerman next to me. I text this information to my friend Tom and he replies with “hero.”

That reply made sense. If you don’t know, Steve Yzerman was a great hockey player for the Detroit Red Wings. He was captain of the team for two decades, scored almost 700 goals, won three Stanley Cups and is basically a legend of Detroit sports lore. Great guy on and off the ice.

Could it be him? It made sense. He could also be going to Detroit (there were actually two flights to Detroit from New York in the same area), he was in New York where a lot of people go for business or for fun and he was about average size, which is true hockey-player size.

I watch as the Yzerman doppleganger walks to a nearby store and then lose track of his whereabouts for the next half hour. Finally, it’s time to board the plane and I head over to say hi to Dave, one of our clients at Cadillac. Dave has also seen the Yzerman clone and we launch into a discussion about whether it can be him.

Dave points out a key fact – the Yzerman twin has a small but noticeable scar on his face, a telltale sign of a possible connection to the rough-and-tumble sport of hockey. He also looks like he’s about the right age and size.

I’m not entirely convinced. You see, when sort-of Stevie Y walked over to the store, he sort of ambled over there casually. The Steve Yzerman I know would have walked with a purpose.

Anyway, it came time to board the plane and I stared down everybody walking on to that plane. No sign of maybe-Yzerman. I did the same drill when we got off the plane. No luck.

So maybe it wasn’t him. Or maybe, as Dave pointed out, it was him, but since he was at the airport, he could have been off to anywhere in the world.

One last thought: The Wings have struggled all year because of injuries. But since the Olympic break, they are red-hot and are hitting on all cylinders going into the playoffs. It’s on. It’s so on.